Depending on whom you ask, single-payer health care here in California would be a dream or a fantasy, a delusion or a nightmare. Given the slim chance that Senate Bill 562 will become law, delusion seems like the correct answer at the moment for the bill’s supporters.

So, now what? My own dream for health care reform is quite different from single payer. As a small-business advocate, I believe government-run health care would actually be a nightmare — and the last, expensive straw for California’s smaller, independently owned businesses. My health-care fantasy is for state leaders and residents to step back from the dangerously expensive single-payer idea and instead start listening to California’s entrepreneur population for highly informed insights, ideas and solutions when it comes to our health care challenges.

The self-employed and small-business owners have an undeniably more informed perspective than your average health care consumer. Because they purchase their own health insurance — and often the insurance of their employees — they are deeply, often painfully, connected to the costs of coverage. And because the plans they can afford usually have extremely high deductibles, they are also more connected to the cost of actual care and services than most patients.

Entrepreneurs uniquely appreciate that, as much as we wish it could be, the sky simply cannot be the limit when it comes to health care. There is a limit as to how much we can consume and spend. Tough choices must be made, and those choices must be made by individuals and families, not bureaucrats (in either government or insurance companies).

Those who don’t purchase their own health insurance — whether they receive it from an employer or from the government — are, unfortunately, disconnected from these cost realities. It isn’t patients’ fault, of course. Decades of flawed public policies have divorced individuals from the real costs of their health care. Relying on a third party for health-care coverage is at the root of this tragic ignorance, meaning something that has been thought of as a “benefit” has also stripped us of the knowledge we need to advocate for ourselves.

This is how we have come to the point of considering single payer, even though, logically, who would want to put your health in the hands of the same people who brought you the customer-service experience that is the Department of Motor Vehicles?

Because they are uniquely informed consumers, small-business owners must be given a bigger voice in California’s health-care debates. From them, you will hear calls for lower costs and more choices — both in plan structures and providers. They will remind us that there are other ways to make health insurance accessible and affordable — it doesn’t have to be handed over to the government, an institution that only knows how to make things more expensive.

If the people and leaders of our state continue to ignore the critical perspective of its small-business population, more than health-care policy is at risk. The state has been simultaneously crushing and ignoring this incredibly resilient population for decades.

I have witnessed the attitude of lawmakers who believe our state’s restaurateurs and plumbers, electricians and landscapers, builders and hairdressers, retailers and small manufacturers will just keep taking the abuse of higher and higher taxes, more and more regulations.

I believe small-business owners have their limit, and that the sheer cost of single-payer health care would be the straw that breaks their backs and closes their doors. Single payer would bankrupt California eventually, but it would bankrupt its small-business population first. And small businesses matter: the employ nearly half of the private sector workforce here in California, employing about 7 million people. If small businesses die, California’s economy will perish.

A group of Latino business owners will gather Thursday, June 29, in Los Angeles at the Latino Coalition’s Economic Opportunity Summit to talk about the public policies that would most benefit their community — here in California and across the country. Health care policy is on the list of topics; this provides an opportunity for Californians and their leaders to begin listening to the health-care dreams of the job creators.

It should be a nice change of pace from the delusions of single payer.

Hector Barreto is chairman of the Latino Coalition and former administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration.